Background

I've been asked to describe how I adjust to life and work in Korea. Since I've finished three years in this country already, I think it's fair to talk about my background, how that affects my lifestyle in Korea, and what adjustments I'd made before I came to Ho Gye Elementary School.

I've been teaching in Asia for seven years, pretty much straight. That's a long time to be away from America. Before that, I spent a fair amount of time living and working in Asia in another field, and I grew up in Hawaii, a very Asian-influenced area. I was very familiar with Korean food and knew a few words of Korean before I ever came here. In fact, by best friend in middle school was half Korean and his grandmother cooked for me all the time, speaking to me in Korean as she served me.

I also learned a lot about other Asian cultures from living in Hawaii. My best friend in high school was of Chinese ancestry with his family being very Chinese. I studied Chinese in high school. I went to Beijing as an exchange student. Korea is not China, but some social and linguistic elements match up fairly well. I still get by some of the time by reading the Chinese characters instead of the Korean.

Before I was a teacher, I was a linguist specializing in Asian languages. I know four non-roman alphabets (plus Greek, so I guess that's five). I lived and visited many countries where no English was spoken. I studied languages in immersion-like settings. I'm used to using everything I know about culture and language with contextual clues in order to understand what's happening around me.

All this leads up to the point when I started working in Korea. I spent a couple of days studying the alphabet (that's about all it takes) and some simple survival skills before I stepped on a plane. It didn't make me feel strange: In fact, it was quite normal for me. My first two and a half years in Korea were spent in a small town where there was no English writing and no one other than a couple of teachers at my little school and a foreigner or two spoke any English whatsoever, so when I was asked during the interview for my current job whether being in a small town bothered me, I just responded that it was normal and I didn't have any problems. That is one area of stress which most new teachers have, but I have enough experience to deal with it happily.

Another area where foreigners often have trouble is in feeling isolated. They spend all day with no one to speak English to, then go home to an empty apartment and watch Korean TV. They feel they have no one. I'm lucky that I have Gale. We get along perfectly twenty-nine days a month and seem to know everything about each other.

My next writing will be about the exclusivity of Korean culture.